2 Corinthians chapter 1, it says,
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, Timothy,
our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth with
all the saints which are in Achaia. Grace be unto you and peace from
God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God,
even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies
and the God of all comfort. who comforteth us in all our
tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in
any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
God. For as the sufferings of Christ
abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And
whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation
which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which
we also suffer, or whether we be comforted, it is for your
consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is steadfast,
knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye
be also of the consolation. For we would not, brethren, have
you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were
pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired
even of life. But we have the sentence of death
in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God which raiseth the dead, who delivered us from so great a
death, and doth deliver, in whom we trust that he will yet deliver
us. Ye also help him together by
prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means
of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing is this, the
testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly
sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have
had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you. For
we write none other things unto you than that ye have what ye
read or acknowledge, and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to
the end. As also ye have acknowledged
us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are
ours in the day of the Lord Jesus. And in this confidence I was
minded to come to you before, that ye might have a second benefit,
and to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia
unto you, of you to be brought on my way towards you, dear.
When I therefore was thus minded, did I use likeness, or the things
that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that
with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay? But as God
is true, our word towards you was not yea and nay. For the
Son of God Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us,
even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea in they, but in him
was yea. For all the promises of God in
him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of God by us.
Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ, and hath
anointed us, is God. who hath also sealed us and given
us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. Moreover, I call
God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not
as yet unto Corinth. Not for that we have dominion
over your faith, but are helpers of your joy, for by faith ye
stand." Now, of course, we had spoken a little bit about Paul's
apostleship last week, and he declared that, said, by the will
of God. And there wasn't anything Paul
could do about that. He couldn't keep from being an
apostle, and he couldn't get to be an apostle. I mean, he
couldn't do it. I mean, that's what he was. And
you know, it's like people say, well, I could have been so-and-so.
I could have went so-and-so or whatever. Well, no, you couldn't.
You couldn't win anywhere else this morning than right here.
And the reason I know that is because that's by the will of
God. I mean, there's nobody here that's not by the will of God,
are there? Did you come here except by the will of God? No,
you're here by the will of God. Now, you know, some people, they
take that and they get all frustrated and floundering around with it,
and they get worried about what that means. Well, what that means
is that God is God. Just like He said He was going
to show Pharaoh who God was, He is God. And so a man that
thinks that he will be outside of the will of God does not know
the will of God. Because the Lord will do with
His own as He sees fit. And He will bring the things
to pass that He determines to come to pass. Now, a lot of times
people try to take that truth and then they say, Oh, well,
if that be true, then we don't have any accountability. You
know, because, I mean, if God's will is going to be done, we're
just going along, you know, and that's it. Well, you see, God's
will is that we be accountable. And God will hold His people
accountable. He'll hold all the earth accountable.
Now that's His right, is it not? I mean, did He hold Pharaoh accountable?
Of course He did. But what did He say? He said,
for this same cause did I raise Pharaoh up. He told Moses, look,
I'm going to send you down there to Pharaoh, and you're going
to tell him the same, but he's not going to listen to you. Now,
how did he know Pharaoh wasn't going to listen to him? Did he
look down through time and he said, well, look, Pharaoh's not
going to listen to him? No, he didn't do that. He determined
that Pharaoh wouldn't listen to him. He hardened Pharaoh's
heart, and Pharaoh didn't listen to him. Now, did Pharaoh harden
his heart? The Scripture says Pharaoh hardened
his heart. But God hardened his heart. God hardened his heart
before Pharaoh hardened his heart. But you see, no doubt in either
case, Pharaoh was accountable. And we don't need to judge whether
or not men are accountable before God because all men are accountable
before God. Every man's going to give an
account. That's what the Scripture says. Now, you know, if you can't
reconcile that in your mind with God being an absolute sovereign
who does according to His will in the army of heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth, and there's none that can stay
His hand or say unto Him what doest thou, that's your problem.
You know, you can philosophize and say all you want to, but
the fact of the matter is that God will do what He's going to
do. And I'm personally glad that
he does. We'd be in a mess, would we not,
if it was any other way? How would any of us ever be saved?
I mean, how could we be saved if God didn't will that we'd
be saved? It couldn't be any other way.
But some people take comfort in their own will, I guess, and
they say, oh, well, I've got myself in this. Well, brother,
if you can get yourself in it, you can get yourself out. That's
not a confident thought, is it? Because the Lord has His purpose,
and His purpose is to deliver His people, even as He said there
to Moses. And so Paul speaks about coming
unto them with Timothy, who was his right-hand man, a man that
he had a lot of confidence in, been raised up under Paul's ministry. And he prays here for them as
he often does, says, Grace be to you and peace from God our
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is a prayer. That is a desire. Now is God
going to bless His people whether we pray for them or not? Sure
He is. He is going to. Why? Because
He loves them. But you see, He gives us a privilege
of loving the brethren and desiring that the grace of God be upon
the brethren. I mean, that's what we want,
don't we? We don't want harm to come to the people of God.
We don't want the people of God to be cast out from His presence.
We want them to be drawn unto Him. We want to be built up in
the most holy faith. We want to strengthen one another
and help one another and guide one another. We are our brother's
keeper. And so we do pray. We pray not in order that these
things be done, but we pray because we rejoice that God is going
to do these things. Grace be unto you and peace from
God our Father, from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God,
even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies
and the God of all comfort. Now, I wanted to think a little
bit about that this morning, the God of all comfort. who comforteth
us in all of our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort
them which are in any trouble. By what? By the comfort wherewith
we ourselves are comforted of God. And then he says, For as
the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also
aboundeth by Christ. Now what are the sufferings that
he speaks about here? Now obviously Paul was not reluctant
to speak of the physical sufferings and the troubles as he goes on
to tell them there about what happened to him in Asia and all
these things. And so he was not mindful to tell them of the actual
physical sufferings that he went in. But I don't think that's
what he's talking about here because you see the God of all
comfort And the comfort that came to the apostle Paul only
came through one thing, and that was in his abiding faith and
belief by the grace of God, the hope that he had in the work
that Jesus Christ had performed. Now that's the only place that
God's people are going to find any comfort. You can't find comfort
in some soothing words that somebody will tell you. Now, I'm not saying
that you can't help somebody along the way, but that's not
going to be the comfort of the people of God. Now, you know,
when we're not feeling well or something, it's good for somebody
to pat us on the back and rub our head, you know, and tell
us, you know, that they care about us and all that. That's
good. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing. But
that's not our comfort, you know, because when they're gone, we'll
be forgot about that. But you see, the comfort that
Paul is talking about here is the comfort that he had in the
knowledge that Jesus Christ cared for him. The knowledge that he
had that Jesus Christ had delivered His people by His suffering on
the cross of Christ. Now, rather than thinking about
our suffering, whatever it might be, You know, in Paul's case, he
was put into a situation and sent with a very unpopular message
into a region of the world that was not at all amenable to listening
to that message. And he was sent like a dove among
the ravening wolves. He was sent there even as the
Lord Jesus Christ came into the world as a sheep before shears
was done. He came into the very presence
of all these pagan cultures. Now we see that the Corinthian
church was evidently quite a large assemblage of people in consideration
of all of the various churches that were there. But compared to the population of
Corinth, they were a drop in the bucket. Now, there was a
bunch of them, but there wasn't many of them comparatively speaking. The vast majority of the people
in Corinth hated the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the vast majority
of the people that Paul came in contact with were not happy
to see him come. They were happy to see him go.
And they did not want him around. And so in many cases he found
himself in great physical danger as according to the will of God.
And so surely in the midst of all of this, had it not been
that he had an abiding belief and hope in what Jesus Christ
had sent him to do and what Jesus Christ had accomplished, he wouldn't
have had any comfort at all. And so this morning, as we think
about the God of all comfort, what is it? Where do we find
our greatest comfort? is it in, some people say, well,
I'm comforted when I read the Bible. Well, you know, sometimes
you can read the Bible and I have to confess, sometimes I read
it and it's just like words on the page, they're just there
and I read it and I read it and I say, well, I need to read that
and I read it and I read it and it's just like I could be reading
anything. So that, reading the Bible is
not, Comforting, is it? But I tell you what is comforting
is when the Lord is pleased to visit with us and to remind us
as we read the Bible of what this is about. Paul said, God
forbid that I should glory save in the death of Christ my Lord. He said, when I came preaching
to you, He says, I didn't know but one thing to preach, and
that was Christ and Him crucified, because that is the comfort of
the saints of God. Now some people look at that
and they say, oh, well, we need to learn more about, we need
to get on into the deep things. See, that's just kind of superficial
to a lot of people in how they look at what the gospel is. They
kind of think of it as being like, well, that's like baby
food. Dear brethren, the gospel of
Christ and what we're talking about right here this morning,
this is the meat of the gospel. Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
that is a simple message in the one hand, but, dear brethren,
it's the source of all comfort for the sons of God. Because
apart from that, I mean, you can't help me any. I can't help
you. I mean, when the Lord is pleased
to convince a man of his sinful state, there is only one place
of comfort that he can find. It is not the church house, it
is not the people in the church house, as good as they may be,
as well-liked as they may be in his mind or whatever, but
the only place that he is going to find any comfort at all is
in the realization and the hope that he has in that which Jesus
Christ has done in his behalf. Now that is a comforting thought,
is it not? I mean, you know, I've heard
Men speak about many things. I've heard men talk about great
prophecies and just things that would just amaze them, their
scholarship and their ability to take the Word of God and talk
about all kinds of stuff. But the most comforting message
I've ever heard is in consideration of what Jesus Christ did. And
I believe that's true for all of the sins of God. I mean, the
only place we're going to be comforted is in the reminder
of the gospel. That's why this is given to us
right here. Now, we read in the Scriptures
that this was the practice of the early church when they came
together to take this bread and this wine to remember. He said, as often as you do it,
you do remember the Lord's name until He comes again. Now that
is comforting. I mean, when we come together
and we partake of this in a proper understanding, that this is a
representation of the very substance of all of our hope. Everything. Right here. Everything. Not part of it. You know, it's
not, well that's a part of, I remember when I was a kid growing up and
I was kind of thought and taught, I guess, I came up with this
somehow in my mind, that, you know, well that was good, Christ,
you know, Jesus died on the cross, that was just part of what He
did and all this. Now, what's really important
is to go out here and tell people about it. Now, that's a good thing, isn't
it, to go tell people about what Christ did? I think it's a good
thing. I mean, the apostles did it. I mean, the Lord sent His
disciples out to do that. So it's certainly a good thing
to do it, but that's not what the gospel's about, is it? No. You see, the one thing, the most
important thing, is the blood and the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, which is what we come today to remember when we see
this bread, which is His body. He gave His body. He walked on
the earth just like you and I did, just like that's a real piece
of bread right there. I can put my finger on it and
touch it. I can eat it. The Lord Jesus
Christ walked among men in a body of flesh and blood. And He came as a sin offering
for His people. As we mentioned that scripture
there a while ago, He told Joseph, you shall call
His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Not He is going to make an offering
in hope that some of them will be saved. But He said He is going
to accomplish a work in the earth that is going to bring glory
to the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost forever. He's going to accomplish this. He's going to bring it to pass.
He's going to deliver His people. Now, brethren, there's comfort
in that to the sons of God. There's comfort in that to the
man that's been given hope, that's been given a heart to cry out
to Him because He said, All that the Father giveth me shall come
to me. How do we know who the sons of
God are? In only one way, they come to
Him. He said, My sheep hear My voice. I know them and they follow
Me. Now, can a man just decide to
do that? One day can he just decide, Well,
I'm going to decide that Christ went to the cross and died for
me. And that's going to make it so? Not at all. No. But you see, the Lord, it's
an amazing thing. Isn't it an intricate matter
of the Lord bringing His people to faith? He said, All that the
Father giveth me shall come to me. Now, when I was growing up, we
learned the last part of that verse. It says, Him that cometh
to me, I'll know why he's cast out. I didn't have any problem
believing that. Well, see, I never even hardly
heard the first part. I don't know if anybody ever
read the first part of that thing. All that the Father giveth me.
Oh, dear brethren, when the Lord Jesus Christ went to Calvary's
cross, He went there for the people that the Lord gave Him.
And He said of all, He said, Father, I haven't lost any of
those which Thou gavest. He said, I pray not for the world,
but I pray for them whom Thou hast given Me. They belong to
Him. Now how can they be known? Because
they'll come to Him in His own time. I don't know how it occurs. I don't know. You know, there's
nothing that a man can do to cause it to happen. But in the
Lord's own time, He calls His sheep by name and they hear His
voice and they say, Save me. Help me. Lord, I'm blind and
I want to see. What a God of comfort He is,
who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able
to comfort them. See, that's what the gospel is,
a word of comfort to the sons of God. And that's why we preach
the gospel. And so that Christ might be glorified,
but that the people of God might be comforted, that we might be
strengthened, that we might be reminded, that our hope might
be steadfast and strong. And see, the gathering together
of God's people is for the purpose of strengthening the brethren,
because sometimes we're hanging on by a thread. I mean, you know, we're just
dangling. And the good thing about coming
together as brethren is we don't all quit believing at the same
time. See, our faith doesn't all get
weak at the same time because we come together and the faith
of some is strong and that encourages the weak. And then maybe a month
from now the tables might be reversed, but nonetheless, you
see, God put His people together for that purpose. Now what is
the thing, the glue that binds us together? It's not denomination. It's not some confession of faith. It's not even the Bible. What is it? It's that which Christ
did. See, that's the thing, because
we might have a disagreement about a lot of things, but that's
one thing we don't have a disagreement about. It's what Jesus Christ
accomplished, which is the salvation of His people. And right there
is where we find our greatest comfort, is that He is the Savior
of sinners. And as such, we come before Him,
not having anything of our own to bring Him, but just simply
to worship Him as He is. May the Lord help us.